How Did The Watergate Scandal

On June 17, 1972, the U.S. had one of the biggest lies in the history of the White House. President Richard Nixon did some scandalous things to the other party to ensure his reelection. This was known as the Watergate Scandal. President Nixon and his committee took an aggressive approach to their campaign. During his final months before the reelection was to take place, he felt threatened by the opposing democratic party. Richard Nixon and his committee came up with a scheme to cheat their way to winning the election. This scandal goes to show that people will lie and cheat to get what they want, no matter how honest they claim to be or have been in the past. There is no doubt that this scandal is true, not only because of all the evidence
There were many confidential documents taken from the headquarters. The night of the break in, they successfully wiretapped the building and got documents used to exploit the democrats. The wiretapping ended up not being successful and did not work as planned. “So on June 17 a group of five men returned to the Watergate building...”(United States), with a new microphone to replace the faulty ones. During this second break in, they were caught red handed by Frank Wills while implanting the second round of wiretapping devices. Wills was a 24-year-old security guard who worked for the Watergate Headquarters. On that day of June 17, he noticed a door had been taped shut to prevent it from locking. He, …” removed the tape, but when he passed by ten minutes later a new piece had been put on” (The Washington Post). He then called the cops who showed up shortly after and caught all five of them behind a desk in one of the offices. The spies were arrested for serious crimes such as burglary, conspiracy and violations, and were sentenced to prison. The men, took cash along with some documents that ended up not being very serious. The documents taken were mostly of financial reports. The five men arrested were James McCord, Bernard Barker, Virgilio Gonzales, Eugenio Martinez, and Frank Sturgis. James McCord was a former
The five guys who were arrested and hired by the president, told Nixon they needed $120,000 as blackmail money. In a White House meeting, President Nixon declared that “…John W. Dean III [has] no choice but to come up with $120,000…” (The Washington Post). Nixon tried to cover this meeting up, when 46 presidential conversations about Watergate were released by saying that he first learned about the hush money in March and thought they were wrong. The investigation continued, even throughout the reelection. The reelection had, “…the lowest turnout since 1948…”, with only 55 percent of the electoral voting. Nixon carried all the states except for Massachusetts. He completely swept out his competitors, but not for long. After about three months of being reelected, Nixon gets caught taping his conversations and calls from his office. He then refused to give the tapes up leading to a new investigation, known as the Nixon Tapes. The tapes turned out to be evidence of Nixon’s involvement in the Watergate break-in. The Judiciary Committee than began the impeachment process against Nixon due to his role in the former misconducts. Before the House could vote against the impeachment charges against Nixon, the President resigned. Though he repeatedly claimed, “I’m not a crook”, he made it very clear by his resignation and secrecy that he played a part of these many